Every once in a while I watch a movie where I can see that the elevator pitch is solid, and somewhere along the way it just got lost. Maybe there was a good treatment that slowly became muddled in the screenplay, or perhaps the director simply wasn’t sure how to translate the concept to the screen. Whatever happened, The Highest Stakes is built around an interesting premise that never quite works. It reminded me of those morality tales where some unseen force gathers a group of people together for reasons that aren’t immediately clear, with the audience slowly uncovering the truth alongside the characters. The Highest Stakes tries to play that game, but it tips its hand far too early and never ends up being nearly as clever as it thinks it is.
It’s almost impossible to discuss this movie with any critical depth without spoiling it, so consider this your warning. The film opens with a home invasion in which a young girl watches her mother being brutally attacked. She never sees the man’s face, but the movie works so hard to hide his identity that it becomes obvious there’s something important about it. At the same time, while the little girl hides upstairs where her mother told her to stay safe, a grown woman suddenly appears beside her. The problem is that the movie never properly establishes this character or repeats the idea anywhere else, so I never once believed she was actually there. The director is so busy trying to pull off sleight of hand that he never realizes the audience can see the entire deck of cards.
The story then jumps to an upscale hotel that feels strangely empty as we’re introduced to five strangers: a politician, a police officer, a doctor, a businessman, and a woman with a very particular set of skills. They supposedly won an exclusive junk food promotion that has earned them a chance to compete in a televised high-stakes poker tournament for an absurd amount of money. They settle into the hotel, meet their host, played by Seth Green, who claims he was hired just like everyone else, and begin preparing for the game. Before long, though, they notice there are hardly any other guests around, nobody was allowed to bring anyone with them, and increasingly bizarre things begin happening throughout the hotel. It slowly dawns on them that they weren’t invited because of a snack-food contest.
Instead, they’re there because every one of them has done something awful. There is no prize money. These are the highest stakes imaginable because only one of them is leaving alive. As the film peels back each character’s past, we discover exactly what landed them at this table. Some sins are worse than others, and the movie spends a fair amount of time showing us why each person deserves to be there, at least according to whatever force is judging them.
Aurora probably has the least severe offense of the group, although the ending left me incredibly uncomfortable with several of the choices her character makes, particularly during one scene involving a bathtub. I’m not convinced those decisions line up with where the film ultimately wants to take her. Next comes the businessman, whose entire career revolves around convincing people to invest in fraudulent opportunities before disappearing with their money. That’s certainly despicable, but he’s almost sympathetic compared to everyone else. The politician ranks next, largely because his actions become the catalyst that connects all of the characters together. His crime absolutely earns him a seat at the table, but revealing the specifics would spoil one of the few surprises the movie still has.
The doctor is even worse, making money by harvesting and selling body parts on the black market. Then there’s the police officer, who is simply a horrible human being from beginning to end. Even after everything starts falling apart around him, he never stops being exactly who he is. If anyone is looking for a movie that’s particularly flattering toward law enforcement, this definitely isn’t it.
Seth Green seems to be having fun playing the mysterious host, although I’m not convinced he’s the right fit for the role. Dan Bucatinsky delivers one of the steadier performances as the doctor, but then there’s Costas Mandylor, who once again seems to have wandered in from another Saw sequel. I’ve never been particularly impressed with him, and this movie doesn’t change my opinion. He always seems drawn to these thoroughly unlikeable characters, but being unpleasant isn’t the same thing as giving a good performance. It almost feels unfair to some of the rest of the cast because there are a handful of capable character actors here who are trying to make this material work.
The frustrating part is that The Highest Stakes keeps opening doors it never walks through. There’s a sequence where the cop wanders into the lower levels of the hotel, finds something bizarre in the laundry room, and the movie simply moves on without ever explaining it. There are horror elements, a little gore, and a few creepy moments, but it never becomes particularly scary. Instead, it just becomes increasingly frustrating because you can see flashes of a much better movie buried underneath everything that’s happening.
That’s ultimately the biggest problem. A film built around deception, hidden motives, and gradual reveals has to be incredibly precise. Every clue, every distraction, and every reveal has to be carefully orchestrated. Here it feels like someone sliced everything apart in the editing room and hoped the mystery would survive anyway. It’s too messy to feel smart, and unfortunately it’s too obvious to ever become genuinely engaging.
The audio description track is uncredited, but I’m fairly certain the narrator is Jamie Lemchek, who I most often associate with International Digital Center. Since there are no credits, I can’t confirm that, but it certainly sounds like her work. Whoever produced it did a solid job, and I really don’t have any complaints about the audio description itself. It’s almost amusing that a small film like this received an audio description track while far more prominent releases still fail to offer one.
I kept seeing little glimpses of a better movie hiding underneath this one. There was a worthwhile idea here, a spark that probably sounded terrific when someone first pitched it. Unfortunately, somewhere between the screenplay, the casting, and the execution, that spark never catches fire. If you’re someone who enjoys digging through strange, forgotten thrillers just to see what almost worked, then The Highest Stakes might be worth the gamble. For everyone else, this is one of those movies that leaves you thinking less about what it is and more about what it could have been.
Rotten: 5.4/10
